The present disclosure generally relates to the field of medical imaging for analysis of certain physiological activities of a subject. Cardiac imaging to analyze myocardial strain, for example, is of growing importance for the clinical assessment of heart disease. Various conventional imaging techniques can provide for an assessment of the heart with regard to spatial coverage and an evaluation of the strain tensor. For example, three-dimensional (3D) measurements can provide a complete assessment of the heart with regard to spatial coverage and a comprehensive evaluation of the strain tensor.
Phase-contrast displacement encoding have been used for myocardial imaging, and cine DENSE (displacement encoding with stimulated echoes) has emerged as a strain imaging technique that, compared to tagging, can offer high spatial resolution, equivalent accuracy and better reproducibility, and where strain analysis is less time consuming. ([1], [2], [3]). DENSE can provide quantification of myocardial strain based on displacement of myocardial tissue, where tissue displacement is encoded as a phase of a stimulated-echo signal. Image acquisition times in cine DENSE can be relatively long and, due to properties inherent to stimulated echoes, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be relatively low. The low SNR, requirements to preserve phase information, and cardiac motion present technical challenges.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the various embodiments described below are presented.